Summer potager
Meet the two most important tools in the potager this summer:
secateurs and string. I’m either cutting back or tie-ing in.
Goodness it’s verdant. Things are exploding into growth. I like to think it’s my great gardening technique. But actually it’s that perfect combination of a very damp spring and my permaculture beds.
Let’s amble down and have a look.
The cucumbers are travelling further than I have this month.
And the courgettes are so productive that I don’t even wait for them to grow into a decent length before I pick.
We have had a harvest of our first coeur de boeuf tomato:
But as usual, the rest are further behind.
And yes I need to sort my foliage. I left for three weeks and came back to find they had romped away.
Wait, you can even see the tomatoes here. Let me try another.
I’m delighted with the upright supports that now host a forest of climbing beans and cucumbers.
Goodness that’s a lush jungle. Padron peppers, other capsicum, basil, beans, broad beans, yet more tomatoes. And ooh look, more cucumbers.
That is the most packed of the beds.
Some had way too much lettuce that bolted. I need to stake the bolting lettuce so the the newly growing lettuce have room to grow.
And elsewhere I have crammed in the dahlias and agastache. And the crocosmia are fine.
I need to go out and tie in the dahlias which have escaped their string prisons.
But doesn’t it look brilliant? So controlled!
Not unlike the tomatoes at all.
Or the beans.
18th July 2021 @ 3:34 pm
How red is that tomato!? How did you do it?
Mine are still the essence of green though there’s a twinkle in the eye of a Marmande …
18th July 2021 @ 3:47 pm
Hilarious!!!!! Yes, twine & secaturs: I spent most of 5 hours yesterday pruning & tying in ….blissfully verdant, wacky jungle this year!! Only the cucumbers have failed …. Ours not to reason why☺️. We’ll done you! It’s a combo of the wet spring AND your amazing raised beds, obv!!Do you remember where you were last year, making them? Painstaking bag after painstaking bag – of mulch, of chippings, of manure, of soil….. pat on the back is well deserved!!! .
18th July 2021 @ 5:09 pm
It is such a great feeling after the mess of last year and the endless piles of compost. thank you for reminding me!
18th July 2021 @ 5:10 pm
Lisa, it’s such an outlier I should have saved every single seed and dried them on a bed of gold tissue paper. Obviously the best seeds there are. Only one other tom is showing signs of ripening before august.
19th July 2021 @ 3:41 pm
It all looks so good, and very importantly so healthy! You must be so pleased and proud.
19th July 2021 @ 4:10 pm
Thank you Christine, I am very pleased and very proud and can happily sit on the deck and gaze and gaze with a smile. And keep a wary eye out for potential thunderstorms on the horizon!